Now if the blood stains will just wash out of those pull-on khaki beach pants.

Wednesday night at Muskegon Yacht Club, Greg Young set out not on a three-hour tour -- "Gilligan's Island" is fiction -- but for about one hour.

The sun in the cloudless sky was falling fast into sunset, soon to dip below the treeline beyond the Muskegon Lake shore, and then under the red horizon of Lake Michigan farther to the west.

The occasion was the final race of the 2007 sailing season.

It didn't count towards the final MYC standings.

This one was for fun.

Aboard Young's 30-foot sailboat, Spectra, was the usual crew.

Plus one.

Anyone who cannot identify the Extra has lost it.

For God's sake, people, look at the title of this column.

Carl Petersen, of Spring Lake, shared time at the helm with the Muskegon skipper.

Below deck, Young's wife, Cathy, mixed a few rum-and-cokes, popped some tops off cans of beer.

Sobriety has its place.

Just not aboard Spectra.

Nothing was riding on the outcome, save for a bottle of rum that Young had bet with another 30-footer, Dave Timmer's Desperado.

As memory serves, first one around a certain buoy won.

Young did.

One of Young's regular crew, Walt Plant, had begged off for the night.

Away he went on a good-sized power boat, he and his buddies gassed in more ways than one.

The nomenclature aboard Spectra flew.

Shouts arose about getting caught in dirty air.

Whatever that means.

The Extra, his green-and-white Michigan State University cap and jacket boasting a certain smugness about the Spartans starting this college football season 4-1, nodded and soaked it in.

An associate member of MYC -- meaning he does not own a boat -- the Extra figured he figure it all out.

One of these days.

Turns out that "dirty air" means other sailboats are blocking yours from getting the full benefit of the wind.

Because these are sailboats and not under power, that's important.
Those scalawags.

After Spectra returned to its slip, discussions turned to this Saturday night's Buster Keaton Film Festival at the downtown Frauenthal Theater.

Keaton, the famous silent movie comedian, used to summer in Muskegon.

His fan club, the Damfinos: International Buster Keaton Society, comes here each October, 13 years and counting.

Many a Damfino, some wearing replicas of The Great Stone Face's signature pork pie hat, stroll the Bluffton neighborhood where Keaton used to get in all kinds of, uh, adventures.

They reminisce about Pascoe's Place, the long-gone tavern where Keaton and others scarfed a lot of fried perch and drank so much beer that a blood test would have had a head on it.

The Extra, a film critic, wowed the some of the sailors by pointing out that the MYC clubhouse used to be the yacht club of The Actors' Colony.

He might be in journalism, but he's not entirely dim.

He was, however, blood stained.

Because the Extra didn't bring anything to the race other than size, his main duty was to "get on the high side" each time Spectra tacked, meaning changed direction.

The extra became "rail meat," raw.

One roll caught his right knee on the sharp edge of a metal cleat, a fitting used to secure lines (don't call them ropes).

Although hardly incapacitating, the injury made a bit of a mess.

Later today, it might come out in the wash.

If not, replacement pants should not be hard to find.

Nor should the Extra.

Saturday at noon, he'll be at Nauty's bar on Sherman Boulevard, camped in front of a monster television set.

He'll be glued to the Big Ten Network's telecast of MSU's home game against the purple-and-white Wildcats of his late mother's alma mater, Northwestern University.
Sparty should party hardy, except for one little thing.

Northwestern has a habit of playing its best game of the year against MSU, even in East Lansing, to the bells of Beaumont Tower.

Last season in Evanston, Ill., MSU rallied from 35 points behind the Wildcats, scoring the biggest comeback in the history of major college football, winning 41-38.

Think memories such as those don't make Wildcats bear their claws?

Hmm.

Autumn is here, but Saturday's weather is forecasted to be more like summer.
Greg Young and Spectra might be up for another sail.